Can You Ever Forgive Me?: So I Dub Thee Unforgiven
Directed by Marielle Heller
Starring Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells
One of my favorite films of all time, Punch-Drunk Love, features a phenomenal turn by Adam Sandler, an actor known for his silly, crass comedic films. It fully displays his talent as an actor and represents the gold standard for this type of comedic actor fully embracing a serious role. Because of this precedent, I was cautiously optimistic about Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the true story of how a struggling author turned to illegal literary forgery to pay bills. Melissa McCarthy is known for a similar type of film as the previously mentioned Sandler, and to her credit, she’s pretty decent in this film. However, the film’s narrative, tonal mismatch to its material, and its overbearing insistence upon drawing forth audience sympathy for a gang of highly unsympathetic characters all make this film a complete misfire. It’s a grand shame and a waste of McCarthy’s dramatic potential.
From beginning to end, McCarthy plays author Lee Israel as a belligerent alcoholic and an entitled slob, which while it might be accurate, does not help to garner audience sympathy. This is not inherently a cinematic flaw: films like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Social Network feature unsympathetic characters throughout their run-time, but in both of these films, the narrative gives the characters interesting plot threads and provide significant character development. Here, there is no significant character arc. From beginning to end, the protagonist learns nothing, and again, this would be fine if the technical merits of the film, or the supporting screenplay established any certain kind of theme with consistency. Here, the screenplay tells us that crime doesn’t pay, but then upends this moral within its last few minutes, even to its beginning credits sequence of extra facts about Israel, showing that the whole film truly never mattered. I’m all for nihilism in film, I can watch No Country For Old Men with great pleasure, but literary forgery is not inherently interesting, and the direction this film takes never seems to care enough to make it so.
Melissa McCarthy’s performance is fine, it’s not exemplary and I don’t believe it to be worthy of any kind of particular praise. It’s just decent. Richard E Grant is also decent in his role as the drug dealing English rogue. Dolly Wells is also decent as McCarthy’s friend and unwitting first victim of forgery. That’s all the performances are in this film, just fine. The cinematography is also decent, but nothing super noteworthy. Perhaps the aspect of this film that I disliked most, other than the tonally hamfisted and haughty script, was the score. The score tries to present a kind of noir inspired jazz that would be common in more classic films of the 40s-70s, and while some films have made it work in more recent decades (see neo-noirs like Brick and L.A. Confidential for better examples of this) the score for this film just feels arrogant and slapped one. It desires so badly to give the film a kind of classiness it lacks in its characters, but this dichotomy feels unearned and jarring. For a film that wants to be an awards contender, these elements combined certainly don’t feel cohesive and composed at all.
Overall, this film fails spectacularly in providing an interesting biopic, or even providing a film that tells a narrative with a sense of purpose or message. I don’t mind films that are unapologetic in their character studies and in their depictions of events such as these, as long as they are executed well, but here, the execution just isn’t there, and it feels like McCarthy is the only individual who actually felt like she was trying to apply herself. It’s a shame, because the direction and the writing both fail to not only live up to the potential she gives flashes towards in this work, but even worse, they fail to live up to providing a film worth seeing.
Verdict: Skip It
Disclaimer: I review movies based on a 5-tier scale: See in Theaters-Full Price, See in Theaters-Matinee, Rental, Wait for Streaming, and Skip It. If a film is released straight to VOD or streaming, the rating will simply change to either Stream It or Skip It. If you disagree with this review, I encourage you to watch the film and as always, make up your own mind about it. Am I wrong? Am I spot on? Let me know in the comments below!
